Entertainment

5 reasons we're loving 'Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain'

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain steps back from the heavily scripted, cutscene-happy approach of past games in favor of a more open-ended experience. The game's sprawling warzones are yours to explore and battle inside however you want.

We've still got at least 30 more hours of game to play before we can give you a proper review, but here are some standouts from the first 20 hours.

You literally build your own army

The Phantom Pain begins with Snake, the story's hero, in a hospital bed. He's been comatose for nine years, and the world sucks even more now than it did when his lights first went out.

One daring escape later, and you're back in the world with a single ally, plus the ability to conscript more. The war zones you explore in The Phantom Pain are filled with enemy forces — but gunning all of them down won't help you in the long run. Vehicles and fixed weapon emplacements can be captured and added to your arsenal, and enemy soldiers can be subdued, extracted and "compelled" to serve in your private army of Diamond Dogs.

Image: Konami

The larger your army, the more resources you can bring to bear on anything from research and development to intel gathering. This develops into a very satisfying feedback loop; you venture into the war zone, send a bunch of recruits home, then return to battle with more support than you had before.

You also get a sweet base

A private army doesn't stay very private if you don't have somewhere to put it. That's where Mother Base comes in.

Fans of the Metal Gear series no doubt recognize the name "Mother Base;" in The Phantom Pain, you get to rebuild the offshore headquarters piece by piece.

Image: Konami

There's a whole element of the game that has you gather resources and commit them to projects that expand the number of facilities (and overall size) of your home base.

As Mother Base grows, so too does your army's flexibility. In addition to getting you the game's sweetest unlocks, a large army also makes it easier to defend against enemy incursions once you start establishing new forward operating bases (FOBs). This online component allows others to invade and steal your precious resources — of course, you can also turn the tables and invade others.

You get to play with this little guy

Image: Konami

In addition to extracting soldiers and ordnance from The Phantom Pain's war zones, you can also extract animals. In fact, there's an ongoing sub-mission in the game courtesy of the ASPCA, which asks you to remove poor, defenseless animals from territories where bullets fly freely. You even come to house these rescued critters at Mother Base.

This puppy is special, though. If you discover him during an early mission and send him back to base, he grows up there and eventually comes to be one of your allies on the ground. And when you bring a full-blown wolf dog to the battlefield, hilarious moments like this are bound to happen from time to time.

The story is yours to write

While there's a definite plotline tying everything together, much of The Phantom Pain is designed to be open-ended. The most scripted missions still play out in the game's open world, which means you can bring the same resources to bear that you would when you're exploring.

Let's say there's a prisoner you need to bust out of a heavily fortified, walled facility. You could go in through the front gate, rocket launcher in-hand, and lay waste to everything. Or you could call in a support chopper and have it mow down the greatest threats. You can also just recon the base until you've worked out guard positions and patrol routes, then find an alternate way in — say, a drainage ditch that snakes beneath the whole facility — and use it, all stealthy-like.

Image: Konami

The point is, there are very few restrictions on how you play The Phantom Pain, which is very refreshing. You come out of almost every encounter with a story to tell, and you can always feel confident that your own story doesn't mirror someone else's.

But there's still a lot of Metal Gear weirdness

Don't fret, fans. Yes, there are very few cutscenes compared to previous Metal Gear games. And yes, this is the most unscripted take on the series to date. But you'll still get your story fix.

The Phantom Pain's prologue brims with the trademark weirdness that series creator Hideo Kojima is famous for. It's basically (mild spoiler alert) an over-the-top, overly on-the-nose Moby Dick allegory, complete with a flying, fiery whale that chomps down on a helicopter right before the prologue concludes (end spoiler).

Image: Konami

Did you like Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker? This game is a whole lot like a tremendously expanded version of that. You've got your Metal Gear story. You just have a ton of freedom to tailor your experience between the big plot points.

Stay tuned for more on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain once the game arrives for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on Sept. 1.

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